First we have Theon and Yara teleporting across the sea and again to Mereen. Then Arya all the way from Bravos to the Twins. Varys from Dorne to Dany's fleet on the way to Westeros. Not to mention Jamie from the Twins to Kings Landing before the smoke had settled.

Can't say the show benefitted from being ahead of the books and not having GRRM as an executive producer.

Laurens wrote:lCan't say the show benefitted from being ahead of the books and not having GRRM as an executive producer.

The show is so much better than the books. I am glad they dropped Martin.

I am not hugely fanatical about the books myself, but I think GRRM is good at crafting stories and ideas, I just don't rate his writing style that highly.

I really disliked some of the choices made in this season. Tyrion being uncharacteristically dumb in making a deal with the slavers and thinking they could be trusted. He's meant to be intelligent and astute as a leader. Not only does he make stupid decisions, he doesn't even see reprisals from it, in fact at the end of the season Dany is practically holding on to his every word, rather than having an "hang on, you fucked everything up whilst I was gone" moment.

Arya was stupid this season too. She was prancing around in a carefree manner whilst motherfucking assassins were after her blood. But that's okay because she was magically healed. This point was so bad that people all over the internet were coming up with theories in vain to account for it being so stupid when taken at face value. But no it really was that stupid, and she really did just get magically healed and not only run through a city, but defeat an assassin after being stabbed several times in the gut. Top to it off she teleported across the world.

I can kind of forgive the teleporting because of the constraints of the medium, but Varys going from Dorne directly to Daenerys' ship was absurd. Why did he even go back from Westeros, to meet Dany who was about to go to Westeros. It's just like they put him in the shot then realised that they forgot he was sent away in the script, and couldn't afford to shoot it again.

We get Jesus Snow coming back from the dead, and no one develops this much by having him talk about it. He parades around the north to various Lords, who should be executing him for desertion. We saw what happened to deserters in the very first episode. Why didn't anyone hack his head off? Did they just buy that he came back from the dead without question?

The Hodor death scene was clever, but I gather this was directly from Martin. The last 2 episodes began to turn things around, but really I thought that the standards had really slipped this season.

Glad I wasn't the only one who wondered at the suddenly instant travel. It has been ages since I read the books but it also seemed like they gutted much of the last book. Like what about Aegon Targaryen? They briefly had Tyrion a slave but that whole plot was missing as well. Lots of stuff like that.

"Every man is a creature of the age in which he lives, and few are able to raise themselves above the ideas of their time." “Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.” ~~Voltaire

Collecemall wrote:Glad I wasn't the only one who wondered at the suddenly instant travel. It has been ages since I read the books but it also seemed like they gutted much of the last book. Like what about Aegon Targaryen? They briefly had Tyrion a slave but that whole plot was missing as well. Lots of stuff like that.

I can understand them missing plot lines to keep things simple, but the blatant plot holes and inconsistencies I cannot forgive.

Like the last episode everyone seems to have forgotten that they live in a feudal system. No way would a bastard deserter be proclaimed King in any sense under that system. Sansa clearly has the strongest claim given that as far as anyone knows she is the only living Stark. I could forgive this if anyone mentioned Robb legitimising him, but that was never brought up.

I understand it's a call back to the scene where Robb is declared King in the North but I can't see why everyone rallied around the bastard deserter with no claim, rather than the Stark who just won the fucking battle for them.

Prolescum wrote:There's a simple answer to that question... A bastard is better than a girl.

ETA:

...in their feudal system.

I don't buy it though. If that was the case they could at least have that debate in the show. If a 10 year old girl can be Lady of Bear Island, why can't Sansa be the Lady of Winterfell/Queen of the North?

Jon is not a Stark, he's a bastard deserter from the Night's Watch.

Sansa is the last living Stark (so far as anyone knows), the widow of the warden of the North and she won the battle for Winterfell as Jon was on the verge of losing.

Prolescum wrote:My biggest bug bear was that John is now not a working class hero but a fucking blue-blood whose innate betterness is due to his genetic stock.

I don't mind the whole parentage of Jon thing that bad, he's still a bastard, just not Ned's bastard.

For me it all hinges on how it's handled. I really hope he is not the saviour, I figured having things pan out that way wasn't GRRM's thing, but you never know. It's got to be important, or else why would Bran be having visions of it? This makes me worry that Jon's parentage, combined with his coming back from the dead is setting him up as a saviour. If that is the case I sincerely hope the forthcoming books handle it in a different way to the show.

I kind of hope that Daenerys turns out to be a villain, that the Others aren't just evil, and that John isn't Jesus. But right now it seems it might actually be that predictable.

On that note I do find ASoIF interesting in that it kind of has us accept the feudalism as a part of the story to the point where we are devastated when the man who executes a petrified young man and forces his children to watch, and would rather allow the kingdom to plunge into civil war rather than dishonour himself get's his head lopped off.

If you think of the story from the perspective of your average peasant, you just see highborn wankers pissing about and fucking everything up for the sake of their vanity. I quite like how subtly subversive it is, to the point where we really dislike the High Sparrow, when actually he is all about bringing justice to the previously unaccountable Lords of the world, and he succeeds at that. Sure he is bigoted by our standards, but we should root for him over Cersei any day. But we're so invested in the horrible system of the world that we hate him...